Speeding Up Yaourt Package Installs

If you use the Yaourt package installer on Arch Linux, you're probably aware
of the long install times of certain large packages like android-ndk or
chromium. The reason for this is the compression. The install process goes
something like this:

Download package

Build package with makepkg

Download sources

Build package

Compress package into a .pkg.tar.xz archive

Uncompress archive in order to install it

Install package

Notice something? The step that takes by far the longest (compressing the
package) is totally unnecessary because the package is uncompressed again in
the next steps.

The archive extension is configurable though. Add the following line to your
~/.yaourtrc:

PKGEXT=.pkg.tar

The compression step should now take only a few instants, because the
compression itself is being skipped.